Data flow crucial to future fleet technology

Increasing connectivity means it’s imperative that the right information is delivered to fleets at the right time, otherwise there is a risk of drowning in data, says Epyx.

Tim Meadows, VP and commercial director at the company, which delivers the 1link range of platforms covering everything from acquisition to service and maintenance to disposal, said that the amount of data being produced was set to rise exponentially.

“We are in a position where fleets already receive a huge amount of data from a wide range of sources, of which we are one,” explained Meadows.

“The arrival of everything from connected cars to improved telematics means that this will increase massively over the next few years.

“The challenge for businesses like us is to not just produce relevant data because all of it has a potential use – but to deliver the right information to the right place at the time that it is needed.”

Meadows says that for every business, achieving this will be different. “Some fleets are primarily concerned about safety, others around service delivery standards, yet more about cost control and, for most, their priorities and key managerial objectives will change over time,” he said.

“What we need to do is avoid creating a situation where we drown them in data or, more probably, prompt them to turn off data feeds other than the most essential because they don’t know what to do with the vast oceans of information they will receive.”

Epyx says that both investment and creative thought were needed to deliver new ways of presenting this data to fleets in ways that enabled them to be successfully incorporated into managerial practices.

“This is likely to demand a great deal of flexibility,” continued Meadows. “Some fleets want masses of data interfaced into big, sophisticated fleet management systems that are highly automated. Others just want a simple, pre-formatted report in a dashboard format, regularly e-mailed.

“What we have been working on over the last couple of years is new ways of warehousing our data that makes it more easily accessible alongside new tools that will format it in any number of ways.

“This has taken considerable investment and no small amount of ingenuity but we believe that we are very well placed to provide what is needed to maximise the positive effect of all the new data that will become available over the next few years.”

Early next year, Epyx will be unveiling the first in a series of new products created as a result of this project.